Piperno's long-awaited work: «We have returned to judging novels and their authors according to moralistic criteria»

Censorship, moralism, the very rare art of not taking oneself too seriously and xenophobia in the Italian streets. A few days after the arrival on the shelves with "Aria di famiglia" (Mondadori), the writer Alessandro Piperno - born in 1972, the author of "With the worst intentions" and "Inseparables", already winner of the Strega and Campiello First Opera Awards , as well as director of the editorial series I Meridiani – has written a brilliant and caustic novel, hilarious and damn contemporary, capable of bringing together on the page the bigoted climate of the publishing world, now blindly obsequious towards the woke climate and all the contradictions of political correctness. At the center of the plot is the story of Professor Sacerdoti, a middle-aged university professor, a cultured and misanthropic man, overwhelmed by cancel culture, banned in the faculty with posts, making him an icon of the worst machismo . But it's only the beginning. Shortly afterwards, following the disappearance of a relative, Sacerdoti will be appointed guardian of a boy he has never seen before, Noah, an event destined to change the lives of both of them forever, between twists and turns and the onset of puberty, the homage to Jewish traditions and an unexpected hereditary implication.

“Aria di famiglia” reflects on time and Sacerdoti's lack of paternity but in doing so, Piperno skilfully avoids the narrative of trauma that reigns among Italian narrators and returns to the bookstore with a novel of international scope, as provocative as it is intelligent, and yet, capable of not never take yourself too seriously. “Family air” talks about our society and the lack of paternity of Professor Sacerdoti.

For your protagonist, what does Noah's sudden arrival mean?

«I couldn't tell you what “Family air” is about. I hope not for something as big as our society, but for something more singular and specific. Certainly, it is about a fifty-year-old in difficulty forced by circumstances to adopt an orphaned nephew who he has never seen before and who comes from a family of Orthodox Jews."

Did you enjoy writing it?

«Immersing myself in the emotional relationship between an old unbeliever and an observant child was one of the most exciting adventures I have ever undertaken».

Piperno, paraphrasing the opening of your novel, I ask you: in a world of touchy people, how do you resist without losing enthusiasm?

«I fear that susceptibility ruins the life especially of those who experience it. The trouble with chronically touchy people is that they laugh little and take everything too seriously. Personally, I would struggle to live without laughing at everything, starting with myself of course."

I ask you bluntly: will readers understand the irony inherent in the Kafkaesque story of its protagonist or will they consider it misogynist? «Thank goodness the readers are not a single block. I prefer to think of the individual reader who will be able to play along. It certainly won't escape him that there is no trace of misogyny in this book."

Her protagonist quotes Flaubert's letters and she highlights how genius was accompanied by even questionable opinions. Can we, perhaps we must, separate the author from the books or is it not right to do so?

«I hoped that the public health committees and the indexed books were a legacy of a dark past. Unfortunately, this is not the case. We have returned to judging books and their authors according to moralistic and puritanical criteria. We have returned to discouraging them, if not outright banning them. At this rate they will soon burn them."

After all, there are inclusive readers' committees at work that have pushed to censor Fleming and Dahl. Is fiction no longer free? And what is the role of the intellectual in this context?

«I don't think there is that much of a difference between those who in the mid-nineteenth century accused a book like Madame Bovary of obscenity and those who today accuse its author of immorality. What bothers me above all is the approach. When I hear the representatives of these committees speak, when I see them foaming at the mouth arguing, my blood runs cold. They are specious, arrogant, bloodthirsty like Senator McCarthy. Besides, I have a skin-deep aversion to the word intellectual. I look with suspicion at those who, feeling themselves the custodians of a superior truth, from the heights of their culture, can't wait to impose it on others."

How do we escape the rhetoric of resilience that a good part of contemporary Italian fiction offers?

«I'm afraid you shouldn't ask me this. I can't speak on behalf of the category."

Are you scared by the protests against the Jewish Brigade at the April 25 marches and the increasingly violent revolt on American campuses against Israel?

«They disturb me, they make me angry but they don't surprise me. Here too: nothing new under the sun. It is part of the same moral climate we have already talked about. In moments of confusion and great populist ferment, the first to pay the price are the Jews. There is nothing stupider and more violent than a slogan. There is nothing more dangerous than someone who always feels on the side of reason. Are we at the dawn of a new '68? Is the Israeli-Palestinian conflict the new Vietnam? Is the Jew the new Satan? I hope not but I really fear so."

Its protagonist reflects openly on the topic. In your opinion, what role does vanity play in the cultural world and in Italian publishing today?

«There is nothing wrong with cultivating a healthy narcissism. Those who occupy an important role in the cultural world have always been prone to vanity. The problem is that today we have lost the restraint in expressing it and every means is used to nourish it. There are writers who get angry if they don't get attention on the front page or if their name isn't at the top of the list at a festival. There are others who seize any pretext to pontificate."

And she?

«Personally, when I am overcome by certain impulses I always think of Kafka. I say to myself: "if he didn't get the recognition he deserved, why on earth should you get it?"